TechFest: Researchers Talk Music, Collaborative Search, Workflow

Microsoft kicked off its seventh annual TechFest this week in Redmond, where the company's research teams emerge from the labs to display their latest technologies. Here's a look at just a few of the technologies demoed at the conference:

Music Steering Project
Researchers Frank Seide and Lie Liu previewed their Music Steering Project, a music application that analyzes audio content to build a playlist of similar music for MP3 devices. Internet radio station Pandora has a similar service, but music steering differs from Pandora's offering in that it uses software to analyze songs, whereas Pandora has a "large army of music specialists that listen to every song and create attributes," Seide said in a Microsoft video.

Collaborative Search
Collaborative search allows you to collaborate with friends, family or co-workers while searching the Web. The offering has three components: search together; split search; and peeking, Microsoft's Merrie Morris told Channel 9. With search together, users logged into Windows Live Messenger can share searches. Morris and her mother shared search information they found on diabetes-friendly recipes, which were displayed on a side menu under the photos. She also searched for hybrid car information with her husband, and search together displayed the terms her husband had already searched to avoid duplications. With split search, half the results for hybrid car searches would be sent to Morris, and half would be sent to her husband so they would not be perusing the same sites. Finally, peeking allows Morris to click on her mother or husband's picture and look at the Web site they are currently browsing. Privacy settings, however, allow you to choose who can use this feature, she said.

Scientific Workflow Platform
Microsoft is working with Project Neptune at the University of Washington and several oceanography groups to help build a platform for being able to process scientific workflows, Rick Rashid, senior vice president of research, said in a Tuesday keynote. "They're in the process of distributing thousands of kilometers of sensors on the floor of the ocean off the Strait of Juan de Fuca to really be able to measure what's happening in the deep ocean at a level of granularity that no one could ever really do before," Rashid said. "And we need the tools to be able to do that, to be able to process the information."

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